Over the past few days Belarusian officials have held several high-level meetings involving Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan, and Minsk played host to a summit of Commonwealth of Independent States leaders. President Alexander Lukashenka has used the period constructively, in an apparent quest to stave off... MORE

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenka’s visit to the Kremlin, scheduled for Friday, November 10, “will obviously be a rather difficult meeting,” according to Russia’s Ambassador in Minsk, Alexander Surikov, at a stage-setting news conference. Russia will not offer low-priced energy to Belarus, he warned, because “Russia... MORE

On January 14, 2007, voters in Belarus will again go to the polls to elect local governments. The opposition, including the United Democratic Forces (UDF) movement, is debating the wisdom of participating in another election that is little more than a façade. A majority, encouraged... MORE

In the past week, 83 journalists from 73 different Russian media outlets visited Belarus. They hailed from 48 regions of Russia and were given a tour of enterprises and collective farms in Hrodna and Mahileu oblasts. At the end of the tour they were invited... MORE

The newspaper Belarusy i rynok recently ran a series of articles on education, devoted first to the new school year, but second to proposed changes to orthography and punctuation in the Belarusian language. These new rules are anticipated to move from draft to law in... MORE

On July 25 the Belarusian militia searched the apartment of the Second Secretary of the Latvian Embassy, Reimo Smits, ostensibly as part of a campaign to uncover the distribution of pornographic materials in the Savetski district of Minsk. The incident sparked a diplomatic scandal that... MORE

Having attained through dubious means another overwhelming election victory last March, and having amended the Belarusian constitution yet again so that there are no limits to his term in office, President Alexander Lukashenka appears to be more firmly in power than ever before. Yet there... MORE

On July 13 a Minsk court sentenced former presidential candidate Alexander Kazulin to five and one-half years of confinement. The verdict, while unwarranted and harsh, also raises some questions about the outlook of the Lukashenka regime. Why was Kazulin singled out for such treatment at... MORE

As the United States and Belarus continue their war of words, accompanied by freezing the actual or imagined assets of each other's leading government figures, Minsk played host to a series of summits. At the same time, Belarus and Russia carried out the largest-ever joint... MORE